10 ms·

White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

184 points by Wingman4l7 14y ago

thehodge 14y ago
Makes sense given the population of the USA, I always thought 25k was too low, wasn't it modelled off Sweden or something which has a much smaller population?
Wingman4l7 14y ago
FWIW, I highly doubt that this has anything to do with the Aaron Swartz petitions. It's more likely because of the recent petitions to build a Death Star, secede from the Union, protect the Sasquatch as an indigenous species, and (I shit you not) petitions to "stop white genocide".
- jeltz 14y ago
  Wont this kind of petitions always get more votes than ones about serious issues? If so what does raising the bar help?
beedogs 14y ago
That took longer than I expected.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 14y ago
Whether the threshold is 100K or 100M, nothing has happened yet as a result of a "successful" petition. Sure, the stupid petitions give them a chance to giggle at the rubes. The most reasonable petitions get essentially the same reaction, however. ["Legalize pot? I think we can guess what they were smoking when they signed that one! Hahahaha!"] As much as I wish it were otherwise, I expect the same for the current "fire the prosecutor" petition. Ortiz might be reassigned to a different state, but only as part of a promotion: she's been "playing ball". They want federal prosecutors to be tone-deaf automatons of sovereign vengeance out of any sense of proportion. This petition is proof that she is what they want. She'll probably print out the page and have it framed for her new office in New York or DC or wherever.
- dasil003 14y ago
  What do you suggest then? Resigning ourselves to apathy would seem to play right into their hand. Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start.
  - justin66 14y ago
    > Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start. If you live in the United States you have a congressperson. Contacting them is a much more reasonable place to start.
    - dasil003 14y ago
      Okay, but a petition is a public focal point that takes 30 seconds to contribute too. The cynical attitude "I'm not going to do this because it won't help" is probably a greater negative to one's personal effect on the cause than however much time it might waste.
      - steveplace 14y ago
        With the current legislature, a local vocal group of constituents is a much more effective means of citizen-government communication than an internet survey that takes 30 seconds to contribute to.
        dasil003 14y ago
        Why is it either-or?
      - justin66 14y ago
        I like the idea that of there being some easy middle ground between doing nothing and going to the effort of calling/emailing/writing a congressperson. If the person you were responding to is correct and nothing of consequence has come of these petitions, that is not what this is. Venting that effort into something that doesn't work at all does not strike me as a net positive.
ttaubert 14y ago
I think this really makes sense given that in Germany we have a quorum of 50k with a much smaller population. The same thing is probably true for other smaller countries as well.
- tobinfricke 14y ago
  What can a quorum of 50k people accomplish in Germany?
  - Xylakant 14y ago
    Your petition might get a reading in the Parliament and you're allowed to speak. However, this is not a guaranteed outcome, the Bundestag or rather the committee in charge of petitions may deny you the public reading with a 2/3 majority. However, on the state level there is a "Volksentscheid" where the people can directly vote or enforce a vote on an issue. The quorum and the topics that are eligible for a Volksentscheid depend on the states legislation. Berlin for example allows a vote on general topics of interest while other states only allow votes on proposed laws.
    - tobinfricke 14y ago
      Have there been any particularly notable uses or outcomes of this process?
      - Xylakant 14y ago
        The most notable outcome was probably the petition against internet blocks in germany [1] which was signed by more than 130 000 persons and was a crucial milestone in gathering public attention which ultimately brought the law to a fall. [1] you know, against child porn. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugangserschwerungsgesetz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugangserschwerungsgesetz for a short summary.
- tobinfricke 14y ago
  I was surprised to learn that the population of Germany is 80 million, the same "order of magnitude" as the United States. (By contrast, the U.S. has 30X the land area of Germany.)
zbowling 14y ago
It started out at 5,000 signatures. Then it went to 25k. Now it's 100k?
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know they had quadrupled it back in Oct 2011: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/03/good-problem-have-raising-signature-threshold-white-house-petitions http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/03/good-problem-have-...
- johnbellone 14y ago
  We don't want to listen. Oh, you actually want us to? Let's placate the sheep for a few more months. If a petition ever gets to 100k it'll go up to one million.
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    There have been petitions with over 100k signatures. There are open ones (less than 30 days old) right now.
    - tobinfricke 14y ago
      I only see one: "Legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group" with approx 300k signatures. The next highest has 80k signatures. (I'm assuming that the "popular" petitions are ranked by number of signatures, which appears to be the case.)
- iuguy 14y ago
  For some reason I'm reminded of Colonel Carthcart in Catch-22[1], who continually raised the number of missions crew had to fly to complete a tour of duty. It's almost like the Whitehouse put the site up to listen to and respond to the people that elected them, but has to raise the barriers so that it doesn't have to listen to and respond to the people that elected them. If that's not Catch-22 in the US government, then I'm not sure what is. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22
jiggy2011 14y ago
If I was a government official and wanted to troll an entire country, I would set something like this up along with a script that behaved as follows: As soon as signatures for any petition came within 4% of threshold value I would automatically double the threshold.
- tobinfricke 14y ago
  Note that, in the case of the White House petitions, the higher threshold does not apply to already-existing petitions, only petitions created in the future. The White House is not trolling in the manner you suggest.
Wingman4l7 14y ago
The official blog post (sorry for the CNET blogspam): http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/01/15/why-we-re-raising-signature-threshold-we-people http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/01/15/why-we-re-raising-...
takluyver 14y ago
The graphs show membership and signatures suddenly rising rapidly in the last couple of months. The article also mentions it. Is that triggered by the election, and coverage of the various "Allow <state> to peacefully secede" petitions that followed?
k-mcgrady 14y ago
Makes sense. In the UK we need 100k signatures and the population is obviously much smaller. The government probably got tired of having to respond to things like building the Death Star.
- jrogers65 14y ago
  > got tired of having to respond to things like building the Death Star. Their loss, really. I'm half joking - putting more money into space research might net us interesting things like cheaper energy (solar panels with no atmosphere or clouds to obscure them) and materials (asteroid mining). A major space station would certainly help with that.
  - chii 14y ago
    interesting you mention space research - the only real reason the US of A made it to the moon is because of the cold war. Perhaps it does take an "enemy" to focus the efforts of a nation. And with the fairly peaceful times now (at least, for the major powerhouses), that doesn't seem at all likely.
binarymax 14y ago
I would have expected it to be a smaller majority signing a whole bunch of petitions. Interestingly it looks like it was mostly one signature per account, until about a month ago (the x-axis really needs more granularity). What I would really like to see now, is are the accounts signing two petitions on average, or is it still mostly one signature per account with a handful of people signing three or more?
ohwp 14y ago
Why not make it a percentage of the (qualified to vote) population?
- tobinfricke 14y ago
  It is already: (100k signatures / 200M voters) = 0.05% Public awareness of the petition site is growing much, much more rapidly than the number of eligible voters in the U.S. Thus it makes more sense to tie the required number of signatures to the number of people who know about the petitions site, which is essentially what they are doing. For example, they might have internal targets of a fixed number of successful petitions per month, or a fixed fraction of petitions being successful. This makes sense. To maintain these targets the number of required signatures would be periodically adjusted.
jlangenauer 14y ago
Petitions are encouraged precisely because they're completely ineffective: a safety valve to allow people to believe they're effecting change when in fact nothing is changing. If petitions actually worked, they'd be banned.
- brudgers 14y ago
  Petitions for Ballot Propositions have radically reshaped California's government over the last several decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_ballot_propositions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_ballot_propo...
  - randall 14y ago
    Some (me!) would argue rather poorly. Design by committee taken to its unfortunate logical extreme.
    - stephencanon 14y ago
      Not rather poorly; disastrously. I don't live in California any longer, but when I did I voted no on every single proposition. Their cumulative negative impact on the possibility of effectively running the state far outweighs the benefit that any one of them might confer.
    - YuriNiyazov 14y ago
      I would argue otherwise. There is at least one political movement that is currently sweeping through the country that was first passed via a California ballot measure because no one in the legislature would risk the political capital for it.
    - brudgers 14y ago
      One of the problems with democratic processes is that they're democratic.
- junto 14y ago
  > If petitions actually worked, they'd be banned. That statement is so scary, but most likely true.
metl_lord 14y ago
I like the idea of the We The People petitions, but I think the focus is wrong. Petitioning the president is a way to get an idea noticed, but it's not the way the legislative process in this country works. Laws are created by the Congress. I think it would be a much more effective system if it petitioned Congress. Right now you can contact your representatives, but I think this system of online petitions would work if the party leadership agreed to have a representative respond to each petition instead of a White House staffer.
Udo 14y ago
Calling whatever is going on with that website "petitions" is a pretty misleading move, and it has been from the start. The "petitions" carry even less weight than ones gathered manually by interest groups, and they certainly carry absolutely no weight if you compare them to legally necessary petitions (such as putting candidates on ballots). What (now) 100k votes gets you is a guaranteed response from a White House spokesperson. That's all. For a WH person to even look at a few sentences of text, it takes 100k people. For the most part, neither petitioners nor the spokesperson take those things seriously. As it is, a petition carries less weight than a reporter asking a third-tier aide a policy question. I'm sure someone at the WH has made the argument internally already if something appears on the "petition" website, that's a pretty good indicator not to do whatever is asked. The "petition" site is also a genius move as far as fake openness and the illusion grassroots democracy goes because it neatly captures and binds both crackpots and armchair activists in a safe bundle where they are guaranteed to have absolutely no impact whatsoever. Politics is not made by internet people, nor is politics made for people in any way.
- smackfu 14y ago
  >What (now) 100k votes gets you is a guaranteed response from a White House spokesperson. And it might even be customized for your exact case, rather than "form letter gun control response #27".
  - Udo 14y ago
    True. I'm not really suggesting the site is a bad idea, but I think people should bear in mind it's essentially just a Q&A.
- benatkin 14y ago
  I also take issue with the name of the site.
bendmorris 14y ago
Bullshit. Before this change, plenty of petitions exceeded 25k and were ignored because there was no easy political solution. Now petitions will have to reach 100k before being ignored. Maybe it's time to actually exercise our right to assemble and not be pacified by the presence of a petition website.
sageikosa 14y ago
Challenge accepted.
brudgers 14y ago
My first reaction to the announcement was negative: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064624 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064624 But now, I am not so sure. Raising the threshold seems like a sound response to the program gaining traction if the Whitehouse wants it to succeed - closing it down would be the simple response if their goal was not to be bothered. Raising the threshold (a second time) invites people to take the low effort act of signing a petition more seriously - even if this seems a bit counter intuitive at first blush. Imagine if a response from the Whitehouse required just one signature. It would sure gain traction. But it would encourage triviality. "It's 1am, Barry. Make my neighbor's dog shut up." Increasing the threshold requires more political organization. At the original 5000 signatures, the barrier to entry posed from organizing was low enough to reward minimal success at political organization. Moving it to 25,000 required better organization. Barry believes in the power of grassroots political organization to the point of putting his money in the form of a Harvard JD where his mouth is. Two campaigns for president have shown him that much of its future will be implemented with digital tools. The Whitehouse is seeking the sweet spot of participatory democracy at the scale of the Whitehouse. If, as I suspect, similar strategies are implemented at lower levels of government, Democrat party leadership now has data upon which to make informed decisions at those levels. With any petition, signing is a trivial effort. Buy-in comes from watching progress not from demanding answers. The speed with which signatures were collected for petitions related to Aaron Swartz's death shows that the threshold was too low. Firing the prosecutor expresses anger, but it doesn't seek structural change. Lynch mobs don't.
- NathanKP 14y ago
  "Firing the prosecutor expresses anger, but it doesn't seek structural change. Lynch mobs don't." That was pretty much exactly what I said in a comment on that petition the day it was posted on HN. I received multiple downvotes right away, and things didn't balance out until several days later when the comment finally reached 1 point again. So I agree that the low threshold makes it too easy for a short term "anger wave" to reach the petition threshold. But I also think that by making the threshold too high you lose the possibility of smaller interest groups getting attention. Politics is already about the big players, and the giant special interest groups with the millions and millions of dollars to play with. There were already very few successful petitions that actually got responses, now there will be even fewer.
wowfat 14y ago
they should have had a petition to decide if they want to raise this!
tokenadult 14y ago
As I wrote in the thread under the posting of the original source (the White House announcement), http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064137 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064137 The founders of the United States knew that a representative democracy (what they termed a "republic") has some distinct advantages over direct democracy. This fact was discussed at length in the jointly authored Federalist Papers. http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html History shows that this fact is rediscovered in each new generation through hard experience, on a bipartisan basis.
frere 14y ago
This whole idea was bound to be a failure from the start, but still, the administration pushed it. Now they validate my original conclusions: this is a great mechanism to convince the legions of redditors that they actually matter. Whenever petitions reach the threshold, they can just claim "the project is so successful, we have to raise limits keep it manageable", when in reality it is pure window dressing for a President who has successfully manipulated to youth. Ugh, I wish we had a 3rd party!
tesmar2 14y ago
Ahh...one step closer to direct democracy :)
randomsearch 14y ago
Anyone else thinking of a petition against this threshold raise? RS
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  There's already at least one: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-count-taking-us-seriously-back-25000-signatures/cNjdpc3R https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-cou...
nakedrobot2 14y ago
They can require a billion signatures on the petition. We will STILL successfully petition for a Death Star.
sugartits 14y ago
If you want to know how effective a system of action is (petitions, marches, strikes), look at how the government reacts to it. Left-wing causes are a threat to the regime. That is why we saw police being organized to crush OWS, and why Federal prosecutors threw the book at Aaron Schwartz. If you're going to effect a significant change, you're going to need a critical mass of people coming together to do it. Lone wolves are picked off with ease.
y1426i 14y ago
How silly it would be if the government works only on the popularity vote!!
robomartin 14y ago
Repeat after me: I will not discuss politics on HN. I will not discuss politics on HN. I will not discuss politics on HN. I will not discuss politics on HN. I will not discuss politics on HN. One of my personal guidance statements (I hate resolutions) for this year in order to (a) keep the off-topic noise down and, (b) not engage in debates that are often pointless, can be offensive and end-up not helping anyone or fixing anything. I am trying hard to stick to this. So far, so good. Although temptation is sometimes great. Almost caved-in a couple of times. I rather be far more constructive and focus on tech.
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  I did hesitate before submitting this, but decided that it was on topic as it may have insights into the ever-present issue of signal-to-noise ratios in large online communities.
27182818284 14y ago
After the Death Star petition, albeit cute, it was inevitable that they would.
uvTwitch 14y ago
Translation: "We really don't want any more Death Star petitions getting through."
teeja 14y ago
Why didn't they just change it to 100 million and get it over with. If they couldn't be bothered to respond after 25,000 sigs, they've clearly no interest.
javajosh 14y ago
Wait a sec. Are politicians supposed to do what we want them to, or are they supposed to do what they want after we select them for office?
ttar 14y ago
"If Voting Really Changed Anything, They'd Ban It"
thattallguy 14y ago
Somebody needs to create a petition to reduce the signature threshold back to 25k. Better yet, a petition to actually act on petitions, would be nice.
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  There's already at least one: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-count-taking-us-seriously-back-25000-signatures/cNjdpc3R https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-cou...

184 points by Wingman4l7 14y ago

Makes sense given the population of the USA, I always thought 25k was too low, wasn't it modelled off Sweden or something which has a much smaller population?

Wingman4l7 14y ago

FWIW, I highly doubt that this has anything to do with the Aaron Swartz petitions. It's more likely because of the recent petitions to build a Death Star, secede from the Union, protect the Sasquatch as an indigenous species, and (I shit you not) petitions to "stop white genocide".

jeltz 14y ago
Wont this kind of petitions always get more votes than ones about serious issues? If so what does raising the bar help?

beedogs 14y ago

That took longer than I expected.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jessaustin 14y ago

Whether the threshold is 100K or 100M, nothing has happened yet as a result of a "successful" petition. Sure, the stupid petitions give them a chance to giggle at the rubes. The most reasonable petitions get essentially the same reaction, however. ["Legalize pot? I think we can guess what they were smoking when they signed that one! Hahahaha!"] As much as I wish it were otherwise, I expect the same for the current "fire the prosecutor" petition. Ortiz might be reassigned to a different state, but only as part of a promotion: she's been "playing ball". They want federal prosecutors to be tone-deaf automatons of sovereign vengeance out of any sense of proportion. This petition is proof that she is what they want. She'll probably print out the page and have it framed for her new office in New York or DC or wherever.

dasil003 14y ago
What do you suggest then? Resigning ourselves to apathy would seem to play right into their hand. Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start.
- justin66 14y ago
  > Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start. If you live in the United States you have a congressperson. Contacting them is a much more reasonable place to start.
  - dasil003 14y ago
    Okay, but a petition is a public focal point that takes 30 seconds to contribute too. The cynical attitude "I'm not going to do this because it won't help" is probably a greater negative to one's personal effect on the cause than however much time it might waste.
    - steveplace 14y ago
      With the current legislature, a local vocal group of constituents is a much more effective means of citizen-government communication than an internet survey that takes 30 seconds to contribute to.
      - dasil003 14y ago
        Why is it either-or?
    - justin66 14y ago
      I like the idea that of there being some easy middle ground between doing nothing and going to the effort of calling/emailing/writing a congressperson. If the person you were responding to is correct and nothing of consequence has come of these petitions, that is not what this is. Venting that effort into something that doesn't work at all does not strike me as a net positive.

ttaubert 14y ago

I think this really makes sense given that in Germany we have a quorum of 50k with a much smaller population. The same thing is probably true for other smaller countries as well.

tobinfricke 14y ago
What can a quorum of 50k people accomplish in Germany?
- Xylakant 14y ago
  Your petition might get a reading in the Parliament and you're allowed to speak. However, this is not a guaranteed outcome, the Bundestag or rather the committee in charge of petitions may deny you the public reading with a 2/3 majority. However, on the state level there is a "Volksentscheid" where the people can directly vote or enforce a vote on an issue. The quorum and the topics that are eligible for a Volksentscheid depend on the states legislation. Berlin for example allows a vote on general topics of interest while other states only allow votes on proposed laws.
  - tobinfricke 14y ago
    Have there been any particularly notable uses or outcomes of this process?
    - Xylakant 14y ago
      The most notable outcome was probably the petition against internet blocks in germany [1] which was signed by more than 130 000 persons and was a crucial milestone in gathering public attention which ultimately brought the law to a fall. [1] you know, against child porn. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugangserschwerungsgesetz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugangserschwerungsgesetz for a short summary.
tobinfricke 14y ago
I was surprised to learn that the population of Germany is 80 million, the same "order of magnitude" as the United States. (By contrast, the U.S. has 30X the land area of Germany.)

zbowling 14y ago

It started out at 5,000 signatures. Then it went to 25k. Now it's 100k?

Wingman4l7 14y ago
Interesting, I didn't know they had quadrupled it back in Oct 2011: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/03/good-problem-have-raising-signature-threshold-white-house-petitions http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/03/good-problem-have-...
johnbellone 14y ago
We don't want to listen. Oh, you actually want us to? Let's placate the sheep for a few more months. If a petition ever gets to 100k it'll go up to one million.
- dangrossman 14y ago
  There have been petitions with over 100k signatures. There are open ones (less than 30 days old) right now.
  - tobinfricke 14y ago
    I only see one: "Legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group" with approx 300k signatures. The next highest has 80k signatures. (I'm assuming that the "popular" petitions are ranked by number of signatures, which appears to be the case.)
iuguy 14y ago
For some reason I'm reminded of Colonel Carthcart in Catch-22[1], who continually raised the number of missions crew had to fly to complete a tour of duty. It's almost like the Whitehouse put the site up to listen to and respond to the people that elected them, but has to raise the barriers so that it doesn't have to listen to and respond to the people that elected them. If that's not Catch-22 in the US government, then I'm not sure what is. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22

jiggy2011 14y ago

If I was a government official and wanted to troll an entire country, I would set something like this up along with a script that behaved as follows: As soon as signatures for any petition came within 4% of threshold value I would automatically double the threshold.

tobinfricke 14y ago
Note that, in the case of the White House petitions, the higher threshold does not apply to already-existing petitions, only petitions created in the future. The White House is not trolling in the manner you suggest.

Wingman4l7 14y ago

The official blog post (sorry for the CNET blogspam): http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/01/15/why-we-re-raising-signature-threshold-we-people http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/01/15/why-we-re-raising-...

takluyver 14y ago

The graphs show membership and signatures suddenly rising rapidly in the last couple of months. The article also mentions it. Is that triggered by the election, and coverage of the various "Allow <state> to peacefully secede" petitions that followed?

k-mcgrady 14y ago

Makes sense. In the UK we need 100k signatures and the population is obviously much smaller. The government probably got tired of having to respond to things like building the Death Star.

jrogers65 14y ago
> got tired of having to respond to things like building the Death Star. Their loss, really. I'm half joking - putting more money into space research might net us interesting things like cheaper energy (solar panels with no atmosphere or clouds to obscure them) and materials (asteroid mining). A major space station would certainly help with that.
- chii 14y ago
  interesting you mention space research - the only real reason the US of A made it to the moon is because of the cold war. Perhaps it does take an "enemy" to focus the efforts of a nation. And with the fairly peaceful times now (at least, for the major powerhouses), that doesn't seem at all likely.

binarymax 14y ago

I would have expected it to be a smaller majority signing a whole bunch of petitions. Interestingly it looks like it was mostly one signature per account, until about a month ago (the x-axis really needs more granularity). What I would really like to see now, is are the accounts signing two petitions on average, or is it still mostly one signature per account with a handful of people signing three or more?

ohwp 14y ago

Why not make it a percentage of the (qualified to vote) population?

tobinfricke 14y ago
It is already: (100k signatures / 200M voters) = 0.05% Public awareness of the petition site is growing much, much more rapidly than the number of eligible voters in the U.S. Thus it makes more sense to tie the required number of signatures to the number of people who know about the petitions site, which is essentially what they are doing. For example, they might have internal targets of a fixed number of successful petitions per month, or a fixed fraction of petitions being successful. This makes sense. To maintain these targets the number of required signatures would be periodically adjusted.

jlangenauer 14y ago

Petitions are encouraged precisely because they're completely ineffective: a safety valve to allow people to believe they're effecting change when in fact nothing is changing. If petitions actually worked, they'd be banned.

brudgers 14y ago
Petitions for Ballot Propositions have radically reshaped California's government over the last several decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_ballot_propositions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_ballot_propo...
- randall 14y ago
  Some (me!) would argue rather poorly. Design by committee taken to its unfortunate logical extreme.
  - stephencanon 14y ago
    Not rather poorly; disastrously. I don't live in California any longer, but when I did I voted no on every single proposition. Their cumulative negative impact on the possibility of effectively running the state far outweighs the benefit that any one of them might confer.
  - YuriNiyazov 14y ago
    I would argue otherwise. There is at least one political movement that is currently sweeping through the country that was first passed via a California ballot measure because no one in the legislature would risk the political capital for it.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    One of the problems with democratic processes is that they're democratic.
junto 14y ago
> If petitions actually worked, they'd be banned. That statement is so scary, but most likely true.

metl_lord 14y ago

I like the idea of the We The People petitions, but I think the focus is wrong. Petitioning the president is a way to get an idea noticed, but it's not the way the legislative process in this country works. Laws are created by the Congress. I think it would be a much more effective system if it petitioned Congress. Right now you can contact your representatives, but I think this system of online petitions would work if the party leadership agreed to have a representative respond to each petition instead of a White House staffer.

Udo 14y ago

Calling whatever is going on with that website "petitions" is a pretty misleading move, and it has been from the start. The "petitions" carry even less weight than ones gathered manually by interest groups, and they certainly carry absolutely no weight if you compare them to legally necessary petitions (such as putting candidates on ballots). What (now) 100k votes gets you is a guaranteed response from a White House spokesperson. That's all. For a WH person to even look at a few sentences of text, it takes 100k people. For the most part, neither petitioners nor the spokesperson take those things seriously. As it is, a petition carries less weight than a reporter asking a third-tier aide a policy question. I'm sure someone at the WH has made the argument internally already if something appears on the "petition" website, that's a pretty good indicator not to do whatever is asked. The "petition" site is also a genius move as far as fake openness and the illusion grassroots democracy goes because it neatly captures and binds both crackpots and armchair activists in a safe bundle where they are guaranteed to have absolutely no impact whatsoever. Politics is not made by internet people, nor is politics made for people in any way.

smackfu 14y ago
>What (now) 100k votes gets you is a guaranteed response from a White House spokesperson. And it might even be customized for your exact case, rather than "form letter gun control response #27".
- Udo 14y ago
  True. I'm not really suggesting the site is a bad idea, but I think people should bear in mind it's essentially just a Q&A.
benatkin 14y ago
I also take issue with the name of the site.

bendmorris 14y ago

Bullshit. Before this change, plenty of petitions exceeded 25k and were ignored because there was no easy political solution. Now petitions will have to reach 100k before being ignored. Maybe it's time to actually exercise our right to assemble and not be pacified by the presence of a petition website.

sageikosa 14y ago

Challenge accepted.

brudgers 14y ago

My first reaction to the announcement was negative: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064624 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064624 But now, I am not so sure. Raising the threshold seems like a sound response to the program gaining traction if the Whitehouse wants it to succeed - closing it down would be the simple response if their goal was not to be bothered. Raising the threshold (a second time) invites people to take the low effort act of signing a petition more seriously - even if this seems a bit counter intuitive at first blush. Imagine if a response from the Whitehouse required just one signature. It would sure gain traction. But it would encourage triviality. "It's 1am, Barry. Make my neighbor's dog shut up." Increasing the threshold requires more political organization. At the original 5000 signatures, the barrier to entry posed from organizing was low enough to reward minimal success at political organization. Moving it to 25,000 required better organization. Barry believes in the power of grassroots political organization to the point of putting his money in the form of a Harvard JD where his mouth is. Two campaigns for president have shown him that much of its future will be implemented with digital tools. The Whitehouse is seeking the sweet spot of participatory democracy at the scale of the Whitehouse. If, as I suspect, similar strategies are implemented at lower levels of government, Democrat party leadership now has data upon which to make informed decisions at those levels. With any petition, signing is a trivial effort. Buy-in comes from watching progress not from demanding answers. The speed with which signatures were collected for petitions related to Aaron Swartz's death shows that the threshold was too low. Firing the prosecutor expresses anger, but it doesn't seek structural change. Lynch mobs don't.

NathanKP 14y ago
"Firing the prosecutor expresses anger, but it doesn't seek structural change. Lynch mobs don't." That was pretty much exactly what I said in a comment on that petition the day it was posted on HN. I received multiple downvotes right away, and things didn't balance out until several days later when the comment finally reached 1 point again. So I agree that the low threshold makes it too easy for a short term "anger wave" to reach the petition threshold. But I also think that by making the threshold too high you lose the possibility of smaller interest groups getting attention. Politics is already about the big players, and the giant special interest groups with the millions and millions of dollars to play with. There were already very few successful petitions that actually got responses, now there will be even fewer.

wowfat 14y ago

they should have had a petition to decide if they want to raise this!

tokenadult 14y ago

As I wrote in the thread under the posting of the original source (the White House announcement), http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064137 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064137 The founders of the United States knew that a representative democracy (what they termed a "republic") has some distinct advantages over direct democracy. This fact was discussed at length in the jointly authored Federalist Papers. http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html History shows that this fact is rediscovered in each new generation through hard experience, on a bipartisan basis.

frere 14y ago

This whole idea was bound to be a failure from the start, but still, the administration pushed it. Now they validate my original conclusions: this is a great mechanism to convince the legions of redditors that they actually matter. Whenever petitions reach the threshold, they can just claim "the project is so successful, we have to raise limits keep it manageable", when in reality it is pure window dressing for a President who has successfully manipulated to youth. Ugh, I wish we had a 3rd party!

tesmar2 14y ago

Ahh...one step closer to direct democracy :)

randomsearch 14y ago

Anyone else thinking of a petition against this threshold raise? RS

Wingman4l7 14y ago
There's already at least one: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-count-taking-us-seriously-back-25000-signatures/cNjdpc3R https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-cou...

nakedrobot2 14y ago

They can require a billion signatures on the petition. We will STILL successfully petition for a Death Star.

sugartits 14y ago

If you want to know how effective a system of action is (petitions, marches, strikes), look at how the government reacts to it. Left-wing causes are a threat to the regime. That is why we saw police being organized to crush OWS, and why Federal prosecutors threw the book at Aaron Schwartz. If you're going to effect a significant change, you're going to need a critical mass of people coming together to do it. Lone wolves are picked off with ease.

y1426i 14y ago

How silly it would be if the government works only on the popularity vote!!

robomartin 14y ago

Repeat after me: I will not discuss politics on HN. I will not discuss politics on HN. I will not discuss politics on HN. I will not discuss politics on HN. I will not discuss politics on HN. One of my personal guidance statements (I hate resolutions) for this year in order to (a) keep the off-topic noise down and, (b) not engage in debates that are often pointless, can be offensive and end-up not helping anyone or fixing anything. I am trying hard to stick to this. So far, so good. Although temptation is sometimes great. Almost caved-in a couple of times. I rather be far more constructive and focus on tech.

Wingman4l7 14y ago
I did hesitate before submitting this, but decided that it was on topic as it may have insights into the ever-present issue of signal-to-noise ratios in large online communities.

27182818284 14y ago

After the Death Star petition, albeit cute, it was inevitable that they would.

uvTwitch 14y ago

Translation: "We really don't want any more Death Star petitions getting through."

teeja 14y ago

Why didn't they just change it to 100 million and get it over with. If they couldn't be bothered to respond after 25,000 sigs, they've clearly no interest.

javajosh 14y ago

Wait a sec. Are politicians supposed to do what we want them to, or are they supposed to do what they want after we select them for office?

ttar 14y ago

"If Voting Really Changed Anything, They'd Ban It"

thattallguy 14y ago

Somebody needs to create a petition to reduce the signature threshold back to 25k. Better yet, a petition to actually act on petitions, would be nice.

Wingman4l7 14y ago
There's already at least one: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-count-taking-us-seriously-back-25000-signatures/cNjdpc3R https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-cou...